A Thank You Card to Ferran

Safe to say, there are few facts about Chef Ferran Adrià that haven’t already been unearthed in the past 20 years of fervent press that have emanated from Cala Montjoi and sadly, the backlash of this saturation seems to have somewhat muddled the importance of this man and his work. Many in the food world, even more so here in the Land of the Plated Fig, can get frothing at the mouth at the mere mention of his name. They are quick to dispel him as The Mad Scientist Chef, responsible for creating a perverse “noncuisine” and inspiring a global legion of aproned lemmings, manufacturing plates of spittle and schmoo. While I’m no fan of a mouthful of tapioca maltodextrin wasabi oil crumble, I feel that there are far more deeply influential reasons than just powders and bubbles of why he is and should be so revered in our industry.

Whether they want to admit it or not, it is absolutely true that he has affected every fine dining chef on this planet. At its most basal, he (and Michel Bras before him) influenced from simply a sheer difference in aesthetics. We all began to envision our dishes in an altered manner, branching out past the old 1-2-3 of protein, veggie and starch. Oh, and a puddle of sauce. The fundamental command by chefs to keep your plates “tight” gave way to the plate-as-a-canvas mentality, opening up the creative floodgates. The involvement of hydrocolloids and other products to achieve these fantastic tablescapes seems to have overshadowed the true culinary prowess required to produce them. Make no mistake about it, Ferran’s — and his brother Albert’s — forward-thinking techniques would not exist if not for their supreme mastery of classical cuisine and more importantly, their unequivocal love of a vegetable’s purity of flavor, the integrity of a perfect fruit or reverence for the most pristine seafood. But the difference in how they approached those ingredients is what was revolutionary.

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My first personal experience with el Bulli, aside from copious cyberstalking and the purchasing of expensive, unintelligible cookbooks written in Catalan, was at the 2004 Madrid Fusión chef conference where Ferran explained to some 500 chefs from around the world how his team approached the creation of a dish. In their El Taller in Barcelona, they would work on just the elemental technique first, somewhat independent of what foodstuffs the technique will be applied to, master that technique, THEN figure out what foods that it’ll be implemented on. Doesn’t sound wildly revolutionary now … but it was. In the majority of kitchens, especially here in California, the traditional approach is opposite. The mantra is product first, technique second. You have the product, the vegetable first and then you figure out, within the needs of the dish, what to do with it: grill it, roast it, pickle it, etc. It was always just The Way. Yet here he was, approaching that same vegetable from an absolutely diametric position. Again, revolutionary.

At that year’s Fusión and the following years that I attended, it became clear that the Adria brothers were responsible for a hugely significant shift in how professional chefs interacted with one another; a whole new world order. Just the mere existence of such a forum where chefs from around the world would come and essentially teach you their internal staff techniques was unheard of prior. I staged at several highly lauded kitchens in Europe in the mid-nineties where the chefs wouldn’t divulge anything of true culinary value until you had proven yourself for weeks, and sometimes months. I personally have been guilty in the past of not handing over certain recipes to those that hadn’t shown their genuine allegiance to the team yet. Think about it, the phrase “Chef’s Secret” is a well-marketed cliché of this profession.

The Adriàs completely turned that entire notion on its ear. Their unfaltering desire to give the world everything they’ve learned has led to a new professional doctrine where sharing your knowledge freely is the model, the norm. The highly successful Starchefs’ International Chefs Congresses and the incredible recent MAD FoodCamp are direct descendants of those early assemblages in Madrid. It is this Sharing, this Transparency, for me personally, that is the greatest gift that Ferran Adrià has given our culture: The ability to eat dinner in a peer’s restaurant, read an article or see an online picture of their dish and be able to, unashamedly, ask that chef “Howdya make that?” He personally made all of our industry circles tighter, our professional relationships more intimate.

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I had the extreme pleasure of having dinner at el Bulli on Friday, August 4 2006. The six of us were guests of a prominent cava producer, so my fellow diners consisted of winemakers, sommeliers and wine journalists. I was the only chef in our party and with that, it seemed, I had received Wonka’s golden ticket as Chef Adrià personally treated me to exceptional hospitality that evening. When we arrived, we were brought into the kitchen, as most guests are, but as the others were talking, shaking hands, taking pictures, he took me out of the group and led me to various places in the kitchen, warmly showing me his magic. Several times during dinner, proprietor Juli Soler would lean into my ear, tell me that the Chef would like to see me in the kitchen. He would then escort me back to where Ferran — or his chef Albert Raurich — would enthusiastically let me watch a pick-up (production of a set of plates); I can’t explain how fun that all was.

Dreamlike: This is how I remember el Bulli looking to me most of the night.

I’ve been to other Michelin-awarded restaurants through the years and several were the farthest thing from fun. El Bulli was different. That environment is a huge reason for the paramount position that el Bulli has ascended to: their infusion of frivolity into a conventionally staid environment. Another facet of fine dining that Ferran Adrià revolutionized was simply making it fun and doing away the hushed pretension of high level cooking, having a sense of humor about the experience and engaging with the diner through a playful cuisine. Look around; thankfully that wonderful premise has impacted the restaurant industry to its core.

As dinner begin to wind down around 2 a.m., guests begin to retire outside onto the beachside terrace, enjoying cigars, drinking digestifs and relaxing. I was in a daze and trying to mentally process what I had just experienced. I quietly asked our server for a gin and tonic which she returned with shortly, expertly made … and in a sizable laboratory beaker. Perhaps realizing that my mind was blown, she led me through a gate and down some steps onto the beach where she left me, returning to her work. The cove’s waters were calm under bright stars. I took off my shoes and socks, rolled my pants up to the knees, and walked out into the warm sea. Listening to the laughter cascade down from the terrace, I stood there in the dark Mediterranean ocean sipping on my drink, reflecting on my incredibly good fortune and the pleasure of it all, blissfully sky high.

Muchas Gracias Jefe.

Ferran Adria will be in San Francisco next week, speaking at the Castro Theater on Monday evening. The event is sold out.